Republican Pennsylvania Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick reportedly raised the possibility of adding funding for Ukraine to the $200 billion the Pentagon is requesting from Congress for the war in Iran.
Fitzpatrick told reporters that he is holding discussions with his House colleagues about potentially setting aside funds to support Ukraine during its war with Russia — in addition to the $200 billion the Trump administration’s Department of War is seeking in supplemental funding to finance Operation Epic Fury, according to a Thursday X post from Puck News Chief Washington Correspondent Leigh Ann Caldwell. The moderate GOP lawmaker co-chairs the Congressional Ukraine Caucus and is known as one of the staunchest supporters of wartime aid to Ukraine in the House Republican Conference.
Fitzpatrick’s office did not immediately respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment.
As news of a potential $200 billion supplemental request for the Iran War circulates around the Hill, @RepBrianFitz tells a few of us that he’s talking to his colleagues about adding money for Ukraine to that request.
— Leigh Ann Caldwell (@LACaldwellDC) March 19, 2026
Secretary of War Pete Hegseth on Thursday confirmed the Pentagon’s $200 billion Iran request to Daily Caller White House correspondent Reagan Reese, saying it is partly needed to ensure U.S. munitions used in Operation Epic Fury are properly restocked.
“As far as $200 billion, I think that number could move,” Hegseth told Reese. “Obviously it takes, it takes money to kill bad guys, so we’re going back to Congress and our folks there to ensure that we’re properly funded for what’s been done, for what we may have to do in the future, ensure that our ammunition is, everything’s refilled, and not just refilled, but above and beyond.”
Hegseth also told Reese that the administration of former President Joe Biden depleted the U.S. military’s stockpiles while supporting Ukraine in its own war effort.
“I think, you know, we’re also still dealing with the environment that Joe Biden created, which was, which was depleting those stock holes and not sending them to our own military, but to Ukraine, which is when — every time we reach back and look at any sort of a challenge we have, it goes back to, well, send it to Ukraine,” the War secretary said.
As of late February, Congress had allocated $188 billion — roughly the same figure as the Pentagon’s current Iran request — related to Ukraine’s war, the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) reported at the time, citing the U.S. Special Inspector General for Operation Atlantic Resolve.
Congress passed five bills delivering billions in aid to the eastern European country since Russia invaded it in February 2022, when Biden was in the White House, according to the CFR. Fitzpatrick has consistently voted to support sending the funds to Ukraine.
While running in the 2024 election, President Donald Trump vowed to negotiate peace between Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Russian President Vladimir Putin “in 24 hours.” However, such negotiations have largely stalled, and the two countries remain at war now 14 months into Trump’s second term.
Fitzpatrick represents Pennsylvania’s First district, a swing seat in the Philadelphia suburbs that Vice President Kamala Harris won by 0.3 percentage points in 2024 — making him only one of three House Republicans elected that year in districts that voted blue at the top of the ticket.
The lawmaker is one of a few dozen targeted for defeat by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee in November. The nonpartisan Cook Political Report rates his race as “Likely Republican.”
(Featured Image Media Credit: AFGE, CC BY 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons)
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